Many thanks for your message & effort to prepare the compilation to be
published soon. It is good counting with dissemination works that take these
information debates to different environments so that new insights and
conceptual cross fertilizations may occur. (These weeks I have been rather
absent minded, involved with the nasty task of closing my desk room and
having to transport home all my archives--throwing away lots and lots of
reprints and docs. No space available at home! It was very fatiguing.
Hopefully it is almost over.) Well, about Arturo's last comment, am sorry
about having to leave out of science most of research activities of last
centuries, including some of the Greatest Founding Books of Biology
(Darwin's), Neuroscience (Ramon y Cajal's, Sherrington's) and many others.
No maths there! Watson & Crick's arch-famous paper with the DNA
report had no maths either... They all will join the heaps of papers I
discarded! Well, more seriously, FIS was conceived to articulate a common
ground in between the different info worlds, utterly separated, taking from
the physical/computational, to the biological/neuronal, and to the
personal/social. There was, and there is, no immediate "informational"
connection at all. Perhaps after taking various steps behind each one of
these realms, a sort of general interconnecting thread could be discovered;
this is what we thought long ago. Hélas, as all these years discussions have
witnessed, the itinerary resembles an intransitable Moebius band rather than
a linear path... But at least there is fun in the attempt.
About data, "dataism", and some other curiosities we will have a new
discussion session at the end of next week. Raquel del Moral will present
the chair of this new session.

Best

Advertising

Dear FIS Colleagues,
The main result of our paper “Data versus Information” is the understanding that the data
and information are different (external and internal kinds of reflection for subjective
consciousness), i.e. "Information = data + something in and by consciousness"

After publishing the paper, Arturo wrote an important remark and I promise to answer in this letter. In private conversation we had discussed some aspects. The conversation was interesting but it is not available for the FIS-list and I have no permission to publish it. Because of this I will use abstract form of questions (Q) and answers (A).
Dear Arturo, I apologize in advance but I hope there is nothing bad in this and it will be useful.

The remark of Arturo was: I'm just annoyed that the most represented

position among FISers, i.e., that information is an objective, quantitative,
physical measure linked to informational entropy, has not been taken into
account at all. After all our efforts to maintain our firm position, we
have been censored.

(A): Usually we say “we collect information” measuring different real
features – temperature, distance, weigh, etc. Scientists from physics do this
permanently.
The methodical error here is that really we collect data.
After processing the data in the consciousness, the information may be created
in it. Reflections (data) exist everywhere, but information exists only in
consciousness. It is important that information in the consciousness of one
subject is external for another, i.e. it is data for him/her.
Yes, I know that many people believe in the opposite, but still there are no
scientific basics this believing to become

scientific theory.

I am mathematician who had worked in the institute of mathematics more than 40 years and, in particular, I have taught probability and statistics. I absolutely clearly know (and every good mathematician knows!) that the probabilities are a human model and do not exist in the reality. Because of this, all definitions of information based on probability are the same what we had published in the paper. This kind of information exits only in the concrete human consciousness!

The rest is data; sometimes called: "statistical data".
(Q): Statistics is so important, that we can quantify the standpoint of
our reality, i.e., quantum mechanics, just through statistical tools. If you
negate statistics in the study of reality, you fully destroy the medicine, the
scientific method and the prospective and retrospective studies. It is totally
absurd to negate the

importance of statistics. I'm sorry, but yours is just a metaphysical
approach to scientific problems.

(A): Yes, I agree that the statistics is very important and useful. But we discuss "what
is the information?" and not "is the statistics important or not?".
Only what I say is that the statistics is pure humans' activity. By processing
statistical data we may predict many events. But this not excludes humans'.
Computer prosthesis of our brains does not change the situation.
Animals do not process statistical data and do not compute probabilities but
very well process data which they receive via their receptors.
In the same time, humans may build statistical models of animals' activities.
Let remember that the mathematics at all ignore the subjects in the
mathematical theories but this does not means that the subjects do not exists.
One and the same formula

may be computed by one student who knows how to do this and could not be
computed by other who does not know this.

(Q): "Animals do not process statistical data and do not compute probabilities
"...
Do not forget that one of the most successful current brain theory, i.e., Karl
Friston's free energy principle talk of Bayesian priors endowed in our brain...
(A): NIce! But brains had worked this way many, many years before Bayes
had invented his theories and Karl Friston had invented the free energy
principle.
We may build many different models of the brain and all in some aspects will be
adequate to what we may measure in and from the brain. This in one hand!
In other hand, this again confirms that all information processes are provided
just in the brain but not in the stones and in the water somewhere outside of
the brain.
So, we have the same:

"Information = data + something in and by consciousness"

(Q): Mmmm... the problem is exactly your "something"... it smells of
untestable, therefore useless and metaphysical. Gimme just one testable prevision of your
model!
(A): For the first step, please imagine that you enter in your room.
What do you expect to see - table, chairs, maybe any friend, etc.
Now, what if you passing the door will see the sea - dark blue water with very
big waves?
Your "something in consciousness" will alarm "stop, this is not your way"!
Your brain will compare the "something in consciousness" with incoming
reflection (data) and as far is the new data to it so unexpected it is.
*** End of conversation ***

The important keyword in this conversation is the concept “model”. Models are created by or reflected in the consciousness.

Because of this,

my simple question is:

What is the “mental model”?

Friendly greetings
Krassimir

From: tozziart...@libero.it
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2018 12:42 PM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es ; Krassimir Markov
Subject: Re: [Fis] The polite and high scientific style of the posts to be published in an International Journal are OBLIGATED!

Dear Krassimir,

There is a misundertanding.
I'm not discussing the quality of the Journal, nor the absence of my name.
I'm just annoyed that the most represented position among FISers, i.e., that
information is an objective, quantitative, physical measure linked to
informational entropy, has not been taken into account at all. After all our
efforts to mantain our firm position, we have been censored.
Il 18 febbraio 2018 alle 23.15 Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com> ha scritto:
Dear Arturo,
1.

You are not correct and not right!

If it is written as you have seen, it is just as it is!
Three times we kindly asked for permission but no answer.
It is possible that my letters were rejected automatically as spam.
What to do? Only what we could to do was to cite posts and to give links.

In addition, it is impossible to include long posts in a short paper.
Because of this, they have to be shortened by author (preferred) or by the editor.

2. The main result from our work on the paper is clearly summarized in my
final words in the paper.
No problems, if you could not read them.
My next post next week will remember it.

3. Finally, the paper in not stenographic protocol.
Not every post is connected to the given theme and it is clear that it could not be taken in a short paper.

The theme of discussion for the paper usually is pointed in my “simple
questions”.

If your posts will concern the discussed theme, please clearly point this.
4. In the next discussion which will start soon, everybody is kindly invited to
take part and to be included in the future paper.
The polite and high scientific style of the posts to be published in an
International Journal are OBLIGATED!
Friendly greetings
Krassimir
From: tozziart...@libero.it
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2018 10:58 PM
To: Krassimir Markov ; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] The FIS paper "Data versus Information " is published
Dear, prominent Authors,
You write in this paper: " Several posts are not included in the text below due to
lack of permission from their authors".

I think that several post were not included in the text just because they were too critical against the loose, flabby concepts of information provided in this paper.

Some contributions are very interesting, but others deserve the despising label of pseudoscience.
On the other side, If you provide ELEVEN (more or less, I cannot be sure, I counted it, but I lost my attention after the Greeek Gods...) different definitions of information, how do you hope to be trusted?

Forgive me to be honest, but FIS means also harsh discussion!

Il 18 febbraio 2018 alle 20.49 Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com> ha scritto:
Dear Pedro and FIS Colleagues,
I am glad to inform you that the paper which was created by a group of FIS
members is ready.
It is published with open access in the International Journal “Information
Theories and Applications”, Volume 24, Number 4, pages 303-321.
The title of the paper is “Data versus Information“.
It contains a small part of FIS discussions but it is representative how
creative